1 Edit Zsadányi Impersonal Narration in The

Edit Zsadányi Impersonal Narration in the Prose of Margit Kaffka, Emma Ritoók and Jolán Földes Abstract: In this paper, I examine the ways in which women writers have contributed to literary modernity, and discuss approaches and rhetoric tropes that are able to convey the peculiarities of femininity. To this purpose, I have chosen to discuss a range of gendered prose poetry methods used by women writers of the first half of the 20th century that articulate the peculiarities of women’s identities. Inspired by feminist researchers Griselda Pollock and Rita Felski, I also examine instances and possible interpretations of gendered impersonal narration, such as the rhetoric of enumeration, overlapping cultural and fictional narratives, and the projection of feminine subjectivity onto objects. I also emphasize that we must take into account not only to the voice, language and personality of a character or narrator when examining constructs of their (feminine) self-image, but also other signs emerging elsewhere in the text. In this paper, I examine the ways in which women writers have contributed to literary modernity, and discuss approaches and rhetoric tropes that are able to convey the peculiarities of femininity. To this purpose, I have chosen to discuss a range of gendered prose poetry methods used by women writers of the first half of the 20th century that articulate the peculiarities of women’s identities. Inspired by feminist researchers Griselda Pollock and Rita Felski, I also examine instances and possible interpretations of gendered impersonal narration, such as the rhetoric of enumeration, overlapping cultural and fictional narratives, and the projection of feminine subjectivity onto objects. I also emphasize that we must take into account not only to the voice, language and personality of a character or narrator when examining constructs of their (feminine) self-image, but also other signs emerging elsewhere in the text. Modernization, industrialization, urbanization and demographic growth resulted in fundamental changes, not only in the economy, society, scientific thinking and the arts, but also in other areas of life, such as popular culture, transforming traditional feminine gender roles that had been previously centered on private life. The process of modernization was fueled further in the first half of the 20th century as the emancipation of women, the emergence of women on the labor market, the right to vote and enter higher education, and women graduates choosing intellectual careers unleashed hitherto untapped social energies. I intend to approach these issues from the perspective of narrative poetry, and examine the ways in which women writers have contributed to literary modernity, as well as those approaches and rhetoric tropes that are able to convey the peculiarities of femininity. In the examined time period, women’s literature was largely informed by Hungarian feminism emerging after the Compromise of 1867, which means that certain issues posed by contemporary feminism emerged as literary topics, while others did not – for example, while the education and emancipation of women was an important literary topic, the right to vote, which was another pressing issue of contemporary feminism, was not. Nevertheless, they did highlight problems that could not be approached through political categories, such as the 1 internal struggles of women, their spiritual hardships as they strived for emancipation, and the complex games of power and attraction between men and women. The roots of Hungarian feminism and feminist criticism gaining momentum at the turn of the millennium both date back to women’s literature at the beginning of the 20th century. Not only does this allow contemporary feminist research to rediscover forgotten works of feminine modernity, but we may also say that feminist perspectives are themselves informed by these literary works in the process. Unlike the processes experienced in Western Europe, Hungarian women’s movements at the beginning of the 20th century have continued well into the present, as similar issues, such as the problems of feminine identity, keep emerging time and time again. To give an example, the emergence of women on the labor market at the beginning of the 20th century was considered one of the driving forces of the economy – and a century later, in a period of economic crisis, the idea that women have resource potential on the labor market has been popularized once again. As subjects of literary discourse, women writers frequently chose the peculiarities of feminine existence and the issue of feminine identities as the object of their writing, becoming speaking subjects at a historical and intellectual-historical time when the notion of the subject started to become denaturalized. One of the most fundamental changes of the 20th century philosophy was questioning the Cartesian subject, leading to issues such as the decentralization of the subject, the very structure of identity categories, the linguistic, ideological and innate attributes of the subject, and the questioning of self-same personalities. We thus see the formulation of a sense of feminine identity in a period when individuals and individuality were in crisis, and the self-image that sought self-realization and means of discovering and conquering the outside world began to crumble – in other words, feminine individualism gained representation at a time when individualism proper was slowly becoming discredited, and this paper discusses how novels written at the beginning of the 20th century manage to overcome this contradiction. In this period, women’s writing already reflects the realization that the self-realizing, world conquering, masculine Cartesian subject is not a viable path for them. Therefore, I analyze rhetorical approaches where discursive positions take precedence over the speaker, and at the same time represent a feminine perspective that channels feminine voices. Furthermore, I also emphasize that when we analyze the constructs of a (feminine) self-image, then we have to take into account not only the voice, language or personality of the character or narrator, but also other signs emerging elsewhere in the text. Classic narratology, for instance, would ask, “Who speaks?” or “Who sees?”, but this would not allow us to arrive at a narrative feminine identity that arises from the controversy of central and decentralized subjectivity. Since methods that focus on a character or narrator automatically assume a humanist subjectivity, the approach is unable to uncover the decentralized self-image sought in the text (Fludernik 2001, 619-22). In the following section, I focus on frequently used poetic tropes and approaches, and the possible reader roles inherent within, which do not pertain specifically to the personalities or discourses of (feminine) narrators and (feminine) characters, but still contribute to the decentralized feminine subjectivity and self-image emerging from the text. I also focus on gendered prose poetry methods used by women writers from the first half of the 20th century, which allow an interpretation that foregrounds a particular feminine identity. 2 Towards the end of the 1980’s, there was a particular trend in feminist research that sought to extend the interpretation of modern achievements to include the works of women artists. One of the most prominent scholars of this approach was art historian Griselda Pollock, who researched the distinctive features of works by women painters, and criticized exclusionist approaches that promote a single masculine perspective, thereby preventing feminine perspectives from gaining ground. Pollock dedicated several earlier and recent studies to the works of women artists (such as Mary Cassatt, Berthe Morisot, and Dante Gabriella Rosetti), and focused on analyzing features that differed from those of contemporary male artists. In the chapter Spaces of Femininity in her book Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism and the Histories of Art (1988), she highlights the differences in the visual thematization of space and the gaze between female and male artists – for example, just like Manet or Degas, Morisot and Cassatt also bring spatial organization into play, but in a different way. Morisot’s works, for instance, often operate with two spatial systems or two separate spaces with strongly marked boundaries (such as a rail along the patio or balcony, a balustrade, a veranda, a shore, a dam, a dike or the edge of a boat), and Pollock interpreted this spatial binary, and the dichotomy of the outside and the confined inside, as a manifestation of gender perspectives. In her reading, this binary space is divided into masculine and feminine, and the isolated, confined and decentralized “central” figure symbolizes the confinement and ostracization of women (Pollock 1988, 62). Pollock also considers the gaze, the scenery, and methods that question the objectification of women as common features in the works of early modern women painters, and presents a very persuasive analysis of Cassatt’s painting “At the opera” (1879) in her book (Pollock 1988, 75- 78). We must also discuss another feminist critical approach, which positions women’s achievements as an important and enriching contribution to modernization, and considers focusing on the ostracization of women to be and oversimplification that also reproduces this ostracizing perspective on a meta-level. One representative of this second approach is Rita Felski, who strived to present a more well-rounded

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